Lee Child - The Hard Way

Pauling said, “Big brother is watching you.”

“I see that,” Reacher said. “We’re going to have to take Lane out of town. Can’t do anything to him here.”

Pauling didn’t answer. She was checking doors for numbers. She spotted the one she wanted across the street on the right. It was a narrow maroon door with a glass fanlight. Through it Reacher could see a staircase that led to suites of rooms upstairs. Not dissimilar to Pauling’s own place three thousand miles away. They crossed the street between standing traffic and checked the brass plates on the stonework. One was engraved: Investigative Services plc . Plain script, plain message. Reacher pulled the door and thought it was locked until he remembered that British doors worked the other way around. So he pushed and found that it was open. The staircase was old but it was covered in new linoleum. They walked up two flights until they found the right door. It was standing open onto a small square room with a desk set at a forty-five-degree angle so that its occupant could see out the door and the window at the same time. The occupant was a small man with thin hair. He was maybe fifty years old. He was wearing a sleeveless sweater over a shirt and a tie.

“You must be the Americans,” he said. For a second Reacher wondered how exactly he had known. Clothes? Teeth? Smell? A deduction, like Sherlock Holmes? But then the guy said, “I stayed open especially for you. I would have been on my way home by now if you hadn’t telephoned. I didn’t have any other appointments.”

Pauling said, “Sorry to hold you up.”

“Not a problem,” the guy said. “Always happy to help a fellow professional.”

“We’re looking for someone,” Pauling said. “He arrived from New York two days ago. He’s English, and his name is Taylor.”

The guy glanced up.

“Twice in one day,” he said. “Your Mr. Taylor is a popular person.”

“What do you mean?”

“A man telephoned directly from New York with the same inquiry. Wouldn’t give his name. I imagined he was trying all the London agencies one by one.”

“Was he American?”

“Absolutely.”

Pauling turned to Reacher and mouthed, Lane .

Reacher nodded. “Trying to go it alone. Trying to bilk me out of my fee.”

Pauling turned back to the desk. “What did you tell the guy on the phone?”

“That there are sixty million people in Great Britain and that possibly several hundred thousand of them are called Taylor. It’s a fairly common name. I told him that without better information I couldn’t really help him.”

“Can you help us?”

“That depends on what extra information you have.”

“We have photographs.”

“They might help eventually. But not at the outset. How long was Mr. Taylor in America?”

“Many years, I think.”

“So he has no base here? No home?”

“I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“Then it’s hopeless,” the guy said. “Don’t you see? I work with databases. Surely you do the same in New York? Bills, electoral registers, council tax, court records, credit reports, insurance policies, things like that. If your Mr. Taylor hasn’t lived here for many years he simply won’t show up anywhere.”

Pauling said nothing.

“I’m very sorry,” the guy said. “But surely you understand?”

Pauling shot Reacher a look that said: Great plan .

Reacher said, “I’ve got a phone number for his closest relative.”

REACHER SAID, “WEsearched Taylor’s apartment in New York and we found a desk phone that had ten speed-dials programmed. The only British number was labeled with the letter S . I’m guessing it’s for his mother or father or his brother or sister. More likely a brother or sister because I think a guy like him would have used M or D for his mom or his dad. It’ll be Sam, Sally, Sarah, Sean, something like that. And the sibling relationship will probably be fairly close, or else why bother to program a speed dial? And if the relationship is fairly close, then Taylor won’t have come back to Britain without at least letting them know. Because they’ve probably got him on speed dial too, and they would worry if he wasn’t answering his phone at home. So I’m guessing they’ll have the information we need.”

“What was the number?” the guy asked.

Reacher closed his eyes and recited the 01144 number he had memorized back on Hudson Street. The guy at the desk wrote it down on a pad of paper with a blunt pencil.

“OK,” he said. “We delete the international prefix, and we add a zero in its place.” He did exactly that, manually, with his pencil. “Then we fire up the old computer and we look in the reverse directory.” He spun his chair one-eighty to a computer table behind him and tapped the space bar and unlocked the screen with a password Reacher didn’t catch. Then he pointed and clicked his way to a dialog box, where he entered the number. “This will give us the address only, you understand. We’ll have to go elsewhere to discover the exact identity of the person who lives there.” He hit submit and a second later the screen redrew and came up with an address.

“Grange Farm,” he said. “In Bishops Pargeter. Sounds rural.”

Reacher asked, “How rural?”

“Not far from Norwich, judging by the postcode.”

“Bishops Pargeter is the name of a town?”

The guy nodded. “It’ll be a small village, probably. Or a hamlet, possibly. Perhaps a dozen buildings and a thirteenth-century Norman church. That would be typical. In the county of Norfolk, in East Anglia. Farming country, very flat, windy, the Fens, that kind of thing, north and east of here, about a hundred and twenty miles away.”

“Find the name.”

“Hang on, hang on, I’m getting there.” The guy dragged and dropped the address to a temporary location elsewhere on the screen and opened up a different database. “The electoral register,” he said. “That’s always my preference. It’s in the public domain, quite legal, and it’s usually fairly comprehensive and reliable. If people take the trouble to vote, that is, which they don’t always do, of course.” He dragged the address back to a new dialog box and hit another submit command. There was a long, long wait. Then the screen changed. “Here we are,” the guy said. “Two voters at that address. Jackson. That’s the name. Mr. Anthony Jackson, and let’s see, yes, Mrs. Susan Jackson. So there’s your S. S for Susan.”

“A sister,” Pauling said. “Married. This is like Hobart all over again.”

“Now then,” the guy said. “Let’s do a little something else. Not quite legal this time, but since I’m among friends and colleagues, I might as well push the boat out.” He opened a new database that came up in old-fashioned plain DOS script. “Hacked, basically,” he said. “That’s why we don’t get the fancy graphics. But we get the information. The Department of Health and Social Security. The nanny state at work.” He entered Anthony Jackson’s name and address and then added a complex keyboard command and the screen rolled down and came back with three separate names and a mass of figures. “Anthony Jackson is thirty-nine years old and his wife Susan is thirty-eight. Her maiden name was indeed Taylor. They have one child, a daughter, age eight, and they seem to have saddled her with the unfortunate name of Melody.”

“That’s a nice name,” Pauling said.

“Not for Norfolk. I don’t suppose she’s happy at school.”

Reacher asked, “Have they been in Norfolk long? Is that where the Taylors are from? As a family?”

The guy scrolled up the screen. “The unfortunate Melody seems to have been born in London, which would suggest not.” He exited the plain DOS site and opened another. “The Land Registry,” he said. He entered the address. Hit another submit command. The screen redrew. “No, they bought the place in Bishops Pargeter just over a year ago. Sold a place in south London at the same time. Which would suggest they’re city folk heading back to the land. It’s a common fantasy. I give them another twelve months or so before they get tired of it.”